Theodore Wafer recounting morning he killed Renisha McBride: 'It was them or me'

FILE- In this undated file photo is the cover of a funeral program showing 19-year-old Renisha McBride from a service in Detroit. Jury selection started Monday, July 21, 2014 in a trial that will put gunman Theodore Wafer's self-defense claim to a tough test. McBride, was drunk but unarmed when she climbed the steps of his Dearborn Heights porch, 3Â½ hours after crashing her car a few blocks away and was shot by Wafer. (AP Photo/Detroit News) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUTAP

"This poor girl had her whole life ahead of her," Wafer testified Monday, "and I took that from her."

Wafer said he fired to protect them self. "It was them or me," he said he felt at the time.

The 55-year-old took the stand in his own defense Monday. He's charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and felony firearm use for the Nov. 2 shotgun death of McBride, whom he shot from a couple feet away through a locked screen.

He seemed stoic, spoke slow and often quietly, at one point closing his eyes seeming to wipe away tears.

After about an hour on the witness stand, his attorney, Cheryl Carpenter, asked a question many have wondered.

"Why did you open the front door," Carpenter asked. "Why didn't you stay in your house and remain with your gun and wait?"

"I thought they were going to come through and I was not going to cower," said Wafer. "I didn't want to be a victim in my own house."

He said he thought maybe "they" would be scared off if they saw his gun. Wafer said he had no land line and couldn't find his cell phone, that he later found in his jeans pocket and used to call 911.

Before gathering the shotgun, Wafer said he grabbed a bat from the basement, but the pounding on his front and side doors intensified. "This isn't going to get it done," he remembered thinking and dropped the bat.

Wafer, a lifelong bachelor with no kids, works at the Wayne County Airport Authority in building maintenance where he earns about $30,000 per year.

He has an older brother, younger sister and mother. His father died just over two years ago, he told the jury.

He's lived in his home on the corner of West Outer and Dolphin in Dearborn Heights since 1994 and said he doesn't have a security system, so he decided to buy a shotgun for home protection.

After his vehicle and his neighbor's were were targeted with paintball guns in October, Wafer testified that he loaded his Mossberg, pistol-grip shotgun with one round of buckshot and put it back in the bedroom closet where it was kept.

On the morning of the shooting, Wafer left work about 3 p.m., bought some McDonald's, ate it alone at his home, "got cleaned up a little but and walked down to a neighborhood pub."

He spent a few hours at the bar, drank about three beers, walked home about 7:30 p.m. and "polished" off a leftover sub from the refrigerator, he testified. He fell asleep watching TV in his recliner under a sleeping bag.

About 4:40 a.m. he said he heard a "loud knocking bang" that awoke him.

"The first thing I did was tun off the TV," he said. "I don't know who's out there, whats going on."

Wafer said he reached for his phone next to his recliner and couldn't feel anything but his charger.

"The sound in the front was louder than the sound on the side and there was something slapping the window," he said. "The floor was vibrating from the banging on the doors."

Wafer looked out the peephole and saw a figure leaving the porch. He couldn't identify their race or sex.

"The figure just jumps off the porch and goes to the right," says Wafer. "I'm in my kitchen looking for my cell phone and then I went to my bathroom and look on the counter for the cell phone."

Back in the kitchen, a few more seconds pass. "Then this pounding starts on the side door; this is loud," Wafer said.

He testified that he thought whoever it was outside wanted to hurt him, that there was more than one and they were going to get into the house.

Wafer said he waited a few seconds and the side door started "getting attacked."

"I could feel the floor vibrating, the windows are rattling," he said. "I'm frozen in the kitchen, then it stops ... I don't know what's happening."

He said the front door "started up again" and it was intense. He had his gun.

"It stopped, and every time it stopped, I'm thinking, so this is over," Wafer said, adding that he never wanted to shoot anyone. "I had to find out what was going on. I had to investigate this. I wasn't going to cower in my house, I didn't want to be a victim. I went to the front door."

Wafer said the peephole was cracked, distorting his view.

He opened the door a few inches.

"This is trouble," he remembered thinking after seeing the screen door knocked in. "So I opened the door all the way as much as I could, then as soon as I did that, a person came out form the side so fast, I raised the gun and shot."

After Carpenter concluded her questioning, the prosecution played the nearly one-hour interview Wafer gave police the morning of the killing.

He seemed reluctant to give a statement at first, asking if he were being charged and needed an attorney present, but eventually obliged.

In the station, Wafer said he was "full of piss and vinegar" when the banging persisted and he opened the door.

Wager never mentioned not being able to find his cell phone to police.

"I should have called you guys fist if something like that, just so you could investigate it you know," he said. "It was getting louder.

"I thought at any time somebody was coming through the door or a window. It was getting violent."

It's not clear why McBride arrived at Wafer's home, but she'd crashed into a parked car more than four hours earlier and left the scene with what the medical examiner estimated to be a blood-alcohol lever of approaching .29. She had a blood-alcohol level of nearly .22 percent when she died.